Looks like Square Enix are going through a rough patch. They've just announced a loss of ¥3.7m (around £25m) as well as the departure of Final Fantasy XV head honcho Hajime Tabata and the cancellation of almost all their upcoming FFXV DLC.
Can't say I'm totally surprised. Final Fantasy XV was an incoherent mess and the constant drip-feeding of additional story chapters (as well as a multiplayer mode no-one asked for) never began to make it into anything that actually hung together. Shadow of the Tomb Raider underperformed, The Quiet Man has been panned absolutely everywhere and all their games seem to be discounted within weeks of release. Kingdom Hearts 3 has taken ten years to come out, the Final Fantasy VII remake seems stuck in development hell, they've sold off Hitman and killed off Deus Ex.
At least Final Fantasy XIV is still raking it in (and has maintained its quality level) and Dragon Quest XI looks pretty good, though I'm not sure how well it's sold. And they're continuing to find some success with smaller projects like Octopath Traveller and Life is Strange, although I'm not sure that's enough to keep a juggernaut studio like this on the road.
I think their problem (especially with their RPGs) is that expectations in terms of quality and graphical prowess are now so high that there's no way they can continue to develop AAA games at anything like the rate they need to keep going. It's a problem affecting a lot of the industry at the moment but SE are probably the most high-profile.
Thoughts?
I can't imagine I'd miss them; never been a big JRPG guy, and almost anything else they just act as publisher for, I can imagine being picked up by someone else; I mean, Tomb Raider isn't going anywhere any time soon. Hell, if Squeenix did go down, someone would shell out for Final Fantasy within minutes (if I was a betting man, I'd guess Microsoft).
Somebody's got to be first to fall from the over-budgeted AAA pedestal, though.
It's kind of difficult for me to locate any feelings one way or the other about the prospect of losing Square Enix, if I'm honest. They're not quite at Activision levels of bland corporate image, but they're close.
Dragon Quest XI looks pretty good, though I'm not sure how well it's sold
Four million copies worldwide so far, though apparently 3/4 of those are in Japan.
I think their problem (especially with their RPGs) is that expectations in terms of quality and graphical prowess are now so high that there's no way they can continue to develop AAA games at anything like the rate they need to keep going
Especially if they keep insisting on developing their own engines for everything. Middleware like Unreal would let them reuse a lot of optimisations and improvements (even their own custom changes) across games and studios, and would undoubtedly make it easier to find talented developers with existing experience (which could improve the time taken to start a project, and reduce technical hurdles as they go).
Somebody's got to be first to fall from the over-budgeted AAA pedestal, though.
I had my money on Ubisoft.
Please don't let it be them, I've got a job application out with SE that I'd like to land and not fuck up.
Maybe MS should buy them as a first party studio. Assuming mart isn't working there, as I imagine the stock market would get jumpy if he was part of the deal.
Maybe Mart can just buy them himself, cut out the middle man.
With all the money he’s made from shares in GAME.
I'm still a Final Fantasy fanboy and appear to be one of the few who loved FFXV (couldn't care less about most of its story which was a mess but loves the road trip tone of it all), however, I would like to see the series stripped back, couldn't care how it looks, the Persona games have proved you don't need photorealism to make awesome jrpgs and I'd wish they'd find a battle system and stick with it (or, y'know, tell all the "omg ATB is so old and shit" wankers to fuck off because FFVII, VIII, IX and X are all still highly playable today but being able to increase/reduce the chances of random battles in the options would be a step forward), then let the story's tell themselves through the characters and the world.
